eLife Innovation Sprint 2018

Can we find a way to recognise the value of scientific content, independent of the journal in which it’s published?

Solving this problem can help addressing the obsession with publication in "prestigious" journals, and hence stimulate researchers to make their work widely available through platforms like preprint servers and other rapid publication and sharing services.

The solution the team came up with was Plaudit: a simple mechanism for researchers to endorse valuable scientific work. Not only was this idea realistic in scope, it also nicely aligned incentives:

Research consumers

can use endorsements from trusted members of the academic community to show them what research is reliable, interesting and relevant.

Authors

benefit from the credibility endorsements provide their work with.

Preprint servers

gain an independent stamp of crededibility for work they host that deserves it.

Endorsers

can indicate which research is useful to them, and can boost their image of being able to recognise valuable scientific work, much like sitting on an editorial board can.

And perhaps most importantly: it fits in with the wider mission of increasing Open Access to publicly funded research.

Pilot development

Between October 22nd, 2018 and February 22nd, 2019, eLife will be supporting us to develop an initial pilot version, and to collaborate with the Center for Open Science to test the concept with researchers.

2018

10 May 2018

Plaudit conceived at the eLife Innovation Sprint

22 October 2018

Start development of pilot version supported by eLife, in collaboration with the Center for Open Science.